


Percussion, Salt and Honey

by Rubynye



Category: DC Comics
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Did I ever tell you how I got fired?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Percussion, Salt and Honey

**Author's Note:**

> Based on/Spoilers for: Some vague time between _Murderer/Fugitive_ and the birdboys' lives burning down. Set after "[Inkblots](http://rubynye.livejournal.com/128546.html)".   
> Beta Reader Who Made This Worth Reading: [](http://sageness.livejournal.com/profile)[**sageness**](http://sageness.livejournal.com/)  
> Disclaimer: These characters and their settings and situations belong to DC Comics.

Title: Percussion, Salt and Honey  
Fandom: DC Comics   
Pairing: Nightwing/Robin (Dick/Tim)  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: "Did I ever tell you how I got fired?"  
Warnings: A little slash, a little angst.

Push, wince, snip. "Just a little longer," Dick says, really to himself. Tim's not fidgeting or complaining, because he's Tim, patiently sitting on a rooftop crate under a suspended flashlight while Dick kneels in front of him snipping off the wire wrapped around his legs. The sharper, deeper breaths are the only sign he gives that it hurts when Dick pushes the cutter under the thick wire, denting his skin. Dick winces every time, but Tim doesn't.

"I'm ok." Tim's voice is steady, but Dick glances up at him anyway; his jaw is set, but he tilts one corner of his mouth up in a little smile. A smile for Dick. Dick grins back as encouragingly as he can, and looks down fast to hide his gritted teeth. The bastards didn't need to use this much wire. They didn't need to use wire at all.

Two more twists to go, and Dick's forced to pause when a gust of wind shakes the light. Above him, Tim is barely breathing, and Dick clenches his fist around the wire cutter. He wants this stuff off already; who the hell ties up a teenager with wire? Even a vigilante teenager?

The light stills. This band's so tight Dick has to wiggle the cutter in; Tim makes a tiny noise in his throat, and Dick aches sympathetically. It must hurt like hell, it kills him to do it, but the sooner he gets the wire off... there. Last one. Tim exhales, long and controlled, and slumps a little, very briefly.

Dick shoves the bits of wire aside, strips off his gloves, and reaches up to check Tim out. "Robin?" The tights are cut in only a couple of places, but Tim's legs are striped with heat beneath Dick's hands. "Can you walk?" Tim nods, because he wouldn't say no with two broken legs. OK, no, Dick breathes and thinks. Tim would say no if he really couldn't. But only then.

"We should get out of here," Tim says, reaching up for the flashlight. "We're a little close to the action down there." He nods towards the street, where Dick can hear sirens and groans. They sound like ambulances more than police cars, and Dick feels vaguely guilty about that.

Very vaguely, fading with every inch of Tim's legs he pets before he pulls his hands away. "You're ok to fly?" Dick makes himself busy stowing the tools and carefully bagging up the wire, because otherwise he's going to cup Tim's face in his hands, and that won't get them out of the night and back home. "Because I can---"

Tim snorts, and smiles on both sides of his mouth. Dick shuts up, but he watches Tim take off before he makes his own jump.

As they swing across the street Dick glances down; the crooks they stopped tonight are being carried out rather than led, handcuffed to their stretchers. Dick might have been a little rough, but who the hell did they think they were, holding Robin prisoner? Babs confirmed that these guys were new players out of Chicago, wanted in several Midwest states, and Tim reported their debate about what to do with him and who'd pay for him alive, or dead. Dick's just sorry he didn't have time to untie Tim there, to let him get some of his own back and just for the chance to watch him in action. On the other hand, it was pretty satisfying to beat some humility into them.

Besides, it's not like Tim was dead weight, between his hacking and his staff work all while propped in a computer chair. It's such an advantage to rescue someone who can assist in their own rescue, and Tim's never useless. Thinking this, Dick almost doesn't notice they've reached his building; then he catches himself, and watches Tim climb through his window easily, like nothing happened tonight. He follows and shuts the window, watching Tim relax with a little smile; while Tim sets his cape and tunic and mask down in a careful little pile, Dick turns on the bedside lamp, strips out of his own gear and almost stops worrying.

At least until Tim sits on the bed and peels off his tights, revealing legs crisscrossed with sore red dents; Dick drops his tunic, hearing himself curse before he can stop himself, and doesn't bother trying to stop himself from falling to his knees beside Tim. Biting his lip, he slides his hands lightly over the welts on Tim's calves, and wishes he could beat each and every member of the gang all over again and much more thoroughly.

That's not what he needs to do right now. He needs to check Tim over, not grope him. "Does that hurt?" he asks, letting go of one leg, cupping his hands around the other.

Tim breathes, a little unevenly. "No-- not exactly. Well--" a slight hiss. "_That_ stung."

Dick glances at his fingers. No red. "The skin doesn't look broken. Want me to wrap it anyway?"

"No, it's OK." Tim folds up his other leg and rubs his ankle. "It's ok. I'm..." His face is quiet and almost blank, his eyelids drooping.

Dick waits, half-unconsciously running his hands up and down Tim's leg, as Tim's ankle-rubbing slows to a stop, as Dick's heart accelerates. He doesn't really know what happened to Tim in there for twenty-six minutes, nine before his silent signal and seventeen for Dick to reach him. All Tim said about the gang was a recap of their conversation over him while they thought he was unconscious. A lot can happen in twenty-six minutes, and Dick's heart is hammering. He doesn't _know_. "Tim, you're--?"

"Fine." Tim opens his eyes, and they're bright, almost feverish, in their shine. "Sore, but fine. A little exhilarated, in fact. I honestly-- " He squeezes his ankle, fingers molded around the shape of it. "Stross and Martin argued about whether to kill me. It seemed likely that they would."

A dark hole rips open in Dick's thoughts, and his stomach abruptly aches. He swallows hard, breathing through his nose, and doesn't let himself remember this morning's recurrent nightmare, the one of his parents falling hand in hand, from the broken rope down to the ground; instead he reassures himself with the tactile heat of Tim's skin, soft over hard muscles, crossed with hotter lines. He strokes downward with the grain of the hair and looks at the strange flat gleam of Tim's eyes till he's no longer in immediate danger of throwing up.

Tim blinks slowly, gaze unfocused. He always sees what's around him, but right now he's not looking at anything; Dick considers checking him for shock, and is just about to reach up and begin when Tim opens his mouth. "I really thought that might be it. I--" Tim's eyes snap into focus now, on Dick, brilliant as floodlights. Tim's smile is bright and huge in his eyes. "I think I feel rather-- I feel intensely alive right now."

"Yeah, you are." Dick's hand is curved over the pulse point in Tim's foot, its steady throb drumming reassurance into his skin. "You're alive, little brother, and fighting. You kicked a metric buttload of ass tonight."

Tim smiles with his mouth almost like an afterthought. It's his luminous eyes that hold Dick fascinated. "Thanks to you, Dick. I--" It hurts to see them dim, and it hurts more to see some horrible conclusion blooming behind them, dousing Tim's smile and slumping his shoulders. "And. Thanks for bailing me out." _Shit. _ "I fucked up, and--"

"_No_." Dick says it as Nightwing, so Tim will hear him. "No," he says again, so he'll understand. "Tim, you did great. Without your help I wouldn't've found out who Stross was or where he and his crew were. And you're fine. Your legs look better already. How's the rest of you?"

Tim shakes his head, mouth thin and tight, eyes veiled behind his lashes. "I'm fine. They didn't take me by beating me down. I missed a dodge and they tangled me with a chain."

"That explains the three guys nursing sore heads when I got there." Tim looks at Dick sideways out of narrow eyes; Dick gives Tim his best encouraging grin. When he puts a little more shine on it Tim's eyelids lift and the corner of his mouth quirks upward a little.

Dick keeps smiling. Tim shrugs, but the droop of his shoulders is easing. "I kicked as long as I could."

"You thinned them out, and that helped me. So did the info you got off their computer while I was putting the rest of 'em to bed. So did finding their hideout, which, I mentioned, I hadn't succeeded in doing. You helped, Tim, a lot." Dick reaches for Tim's hair, and Tim smiles narrowly on both sides of his mouth, but the touch ends up being more of a quick check for head injuries than a hair-ruffle. The next try is much more of a caress.

Tim sits still for it, rolling his ankle in a tiny circle that doesn't dislodge it from Dick's hand, and his smile gets a little wider. "I should--" He makes a little unbuttoning motion.

Examining, not groping. Right. Dick pulls his hands off Tim; his knees remind him that he too can sit on the nice soft bed, so he climbs up while Tim strips off his undershirt and underwear. Tim's wincing slightly when he pulls his left arm over his head, and his legs really just need time to recover, so Dick reaches for the hot purple bruise curved across his shoulder, pressing gently to check the joint. "Ouch. How's that feel?"

"Sore, but I'll live..." Tim's breath catches, his shoulder slumps under Dick's hands, and his eyes flare wide. Dick smiles over his own hitch, but Tim keeps slumping, just like before that unnecessary apology; Dick fights himself not to grab Tim tightly, using the feel of the bruise beneath his palm as a reminder as he tugs him close as gently as he can.

Tim's sigh against Dick's chest is eloquent, relief and apology and self-castigation all in it, and Dick brushes his lips across Tim's ear and through his hair, trying for just enough deniability to keep it from being a kiss. Tim would return a kiss dutifully, working to succeed there where he obviously thinks he failed tonight as Robin. Tim didn't fail in the least, but Dick isn't sure how to convince him of it.

Well, maybe if he can't convince Tim he didn't fuck up, he can point out that even Robins do sometimes. "Did I ever tell you how I got fired?"

Tim winces a little. "I still can't believe I ever thought you just left."

"Hey, the puzzle's shape changes with each additional piece." Dick squeezes Tim lightly. "This one," he says, pointing to the bullet scar on his shoulder. "And the exit wound behind it."

Tim stares at Dick's shoulder, his fascinated expression making him look so guilt-inducingly young Dick bites the inside of his lip. Tim could be in his own bed, with nothing worse to worry about than school bullies and midterms. He didn't have to be in nightly danger, to be here... but they needed him; time and time again they've needed him. Dick's needed him. He lifts Tim's hand and presses it to the scar, as much to feel the touch as to be inviting, if he's honest. Tim's seen these scars before, has touched them, but Dick's never wanted to bring up the story. Tonight, though, it's time.

Tim strokes the scar slowly, circling it with his fingertips, and reaches around Dick's shoulder with his other hand to find the exit wound. Coincidentally that leans him into Dick's side, and Dick rests his hand on Tim's back and feels him almost more than he watches him, as Tim's hands spread out on both sides of his shoulder.

"Who?" Tim lifts his head, jaw firm and mouth pressed in a flat little line. It's the face he wears sometimes as Robin, the one that always makes Dick look twice, because there's no smile in it at all, because it doesn't seem so much Robin as Bat. It's a little like the grim line of Bruce's mouth as he stood over Dick's bed, before sitting down beside him and shattering his world much more than a bullet ever could.

Dick has to swallow around a hard cold lump before he can answer, "the Joker."

Tim shuts his eyes tightly. "Oh." His head-shake softly brushes his cheek against Dick's arm, and when he presses his face in Dick swallows very differently, the lump vaporizing in the rush of warmth. "Ouch."

"Yeah." Dick wraps his arm all the way around Tim and squeezes. "All the bullets I've dodged, and I couldn't dodge that one." That rainy night seems far away now, with Tim tucked warmly under his arm, half his Nightwing suit on the floor, and his pointed mask still on his face. "I told Batman I could hang on, told him not to worry about me, so he could go after Joker. But I couldn't. I fell." Short words, to sum up the memory of that endless agonizing dangle over nothing, as his shoulder burned from the inside and the cold rain stung his face.

Dick still doesn't remember the fall. He never has. And right now thinking about falls reminds him of this morning; he'd rather think about Tim's nod, more felt than seen, stray prickles on Tim's cheek catching against Dick's skin. "What happened?"

Dick looks at Tim, away from his memories. Tim is quiet and alive, hand still pressed to Dick's scar, the red marks on his legs a little less inflamed. "I woke up with Alfred patching me up. Bruce came in--- _Batman_ came in--- and just stood over me and looked at me. Then he pulled up a chair and fired me."

"He'd already fired you before." Tim smiles a little, with deliberate cheer.

Dick smiles back gratefully. He can use the encouragement. Beneath his hand, Tim's shoulder-blades move with his breathing, even and calming. "That's true, he had. I went to sleep thinking up plans to win Robin back. I woke up to the smell of my uniforms burning." Tim hisses through his teeth. "I couldn't get up and stop him. He destroyed all of them, except for the one Alfred saved to put in the Case. Yeah, it used to be my uniform in there."

Dick tries to make the twist of his mouth into an ironic smile. To judge by Tim's raised eyebrows, he fails miserably. He looks down for a moment to straighten his face, but Tim's fingers on his cheekbone lift his head again; as lightly and firmly as he examined the bullet scars, Tim traces the lines of Dick's mask. "So you made yourself a new one. A new identity, a new hero."

"It was time," Dick says slowly. "In the end, losing Robin may even have been--" Tim snorts, and Dick has to laugh at the words he was trying to force himself to say. "Okay, I admit it. No bullshit, I hated being fired. I hated thinking Bruce didn't want me. That he didn't need me." He can't laugh anymore, but he can be honest. "Still... it made me become Nightwing, and that's a bedtime story for another night." That wins him a smile, tight but real. "But I wanted you to know... I wanted you to know I've screwed up, massively, worse than you ever have. Way worse than you did tonight, because you didn't."

Tim snorts again. "So, what you're saying is, if I get myself killed you'll be OK with it?"

Dick's throat is too tight to swallow. "No. Just... don't get yourself killed, OK? No. But... you didn't get killed, and I want _you_ to be OK with that." Dick expects, or at least hopes for, another smile, but what he gets is Tim's thinking face as he turns things over in that ferocious mind of his; whenever he draws his eyebrows down that way he looks nothing like a kid, and so incredibly hot Dick wants to lick him from the little thought-lines between his eyes on down, kiss his forehead to feel his brain working and the rest of him because it necessarily follows. Instead Dick stills himself as forcibly as he would on a stakeout, and holds Tim in the curve of his arm, and watches Tim think. And somehow doesn't touch him.

It's worth it, an endless several heartbeats later, when Tim does smile at him again. "Thanks for telling me this, Dick."

"No problem, little brother." Dick ruffles Tim's hair and doesn't grab it, doesn't kiss him.

Tim takes the ruffle for a little while before ducking away, and when he's out from under it he's smirking. "It's really brave, the way you admit being an idiot."

"Hey!" Dick chases Tim across the bed, and Tim lets himself be caught, and actually laughs when Dick pummels him. "I deserve better than that! What happened to respecting your elders?"

"What happened to age conferring wisdom?" When Dick wraps his arms and one leg around him, Tim curls into it. "Did you really think Bruce didn't need you?"

"Well, yeah. I learned better later, but---"

Tim looks up at him, smirking fondly. "And you never thought he was scared because he nearly lost you."

"He's _Batman_. He's not scared ---"

"Of anything? When it comes to himself, yeah. When it's about you?" Tim rolls his eyes. "He fired you because he was terrified. He made a mistake out of fear. When you remade yourself into Nightwing he was proud of you for fixing it, and more."

Dick opens his mouth, and shuts it, watching Tim smirk triumphantly at him. "You--" There's no way he can keep from kissing Tim, so he stops trying, and Tim twists fingers in his hair and kisses him back. Dick kisses Tim, because of all his intelligence and quiet dark brightness, kisses him hard and deep wanting to sink into him and wrap himself in him, kisses him till he realizes he's about to clamber onto him, that it's late after a full night and he shouldn't start.

So Dick pulls back. Tim moans softly, but by the third blink his eyes are focused again. He looks up at Dick, then reaches over to pick up the bottle of solvent from where Dick dropped it on his gloves; tilting his head for better access as Tim peels his mask off for him, Dick says, "I should let you sleep," mostly so he can know he tried.

"Are you kicking me out?" Tim's eyes are bright and a little uncertain.

"Of course not! You can sleep here! I just---"

Tim rarely looks up through his lashes. When he does, such as now, the effect is, well, kind of stunning. "What if I'd rather not sleep?" He puts the bottle back and his hands on Dick's shoulders, over the bullet scar and the knife slash.

Dick tells himself he tried, and kisses Tim, and this time it's tonsil hockey and the sweetness of Tim's mouth when he really relaxes, the beat of his pulse and the warmth of his skin. Dick's the one who moans when the kiss breaks, when he opens his eyes to Tim leaning over him with hot cheeks and a happy little smile. He could moan just from watching Tim flush from warm pink to glowing red as he tucks fingers under Dick's waistband; instead he grins, and wiggles helpfully as Tim strips him, smiling quietly as his blush gets darker and louder.

Tim leans down, and Dick reaches up, but Tim pauses. "I knew," he says, eyes half-closed. "Actually. When I was... when I got to know the computers. I---"

"Hacked a few things?" Dick laughs. Only Tim could hack those computers, and he wants to kiss him all the more for it.

Tim ducks his head, chin towards his chest, but he smiles wider. "Something like that, yeah. I read a few files. Including yours. I had to."

"I'm glad you did." Dick cups Tim's face in his hands, turning it up to him. "I'm glad you're here." He draws Tim down for another kiss, and this one finishes off the conversation for the night.

 

[PERCUSSION, SALT AND HONEY](http://www.glaced.digitalspace.net/cgi-bin/sappho/percussion.html)

Percussion, salt and honey,  
A quivering in the thighs;  
He shakes me all over again,  
Eros who cannot be thrown,  
Who stalks on all fours  
Like a beast.

Sappho, translated by Guy Davenport


End file.
